�Hello, Mudda, Hello Fadda,
Here I am at Camp Granada . . .�
As I put a few more miles on this chassis, I am finding a great gift: the ability to more clearly see and understand my parents. Or at least to be more objective about them.
I am TWI at the moment (Temporarily Without Internet), so I am not able to look back on what I know are at least two or three frantic guilt-ridden entries about summers and my folks. But I�m pretty sure they are still there.
So. An object lesson in Why Ygraine is Not the Problem. Or, rather, a few points that draw a line. N.B., Man, am I rusty. This all sounded so much better in my head.
Look, my folks are good as gold. They really are. But they are quirky. We all have our quirks, I know. The mere fact that this entry reads, in words, like a plain whinge, while it sounded rather smart in my head, surely evinces a un-named quirk of my own.
I read somewhere, maybe in Mars/Venus, about women and worry. Or maybe it was a magazine. I think the latter, come to think of it. Anyway, the passage/article was talking about coping mechanisms for chronic worriers. I don�t know that my mother worries, in the sense of the article, but the sentiment is the same: �Oy vey, how can anyone fuss so much about so little?�
Or maybe �fuss� is the wrong word. Maybe what I want is �monitor.� Or �track� might be even closer. Or maybe I just need examples to explain.
Out at the cabins, Uncle had to leave for the airport at 3:15 p.m. Brother was supposed to be back from an errand at 3:15 p.m., with, in tow, a cousin who had to also leave for the airport at 3:15 p.m. but had needed to run this particular errand. Cousin was to hitch a ride with Uncle to the airport. Brother and Cousin were late, and Uncle waited a very short while, but then he had to leave.
�Tell Brother when he returns,� he told my mother, �that he will have to take Cousin to the airport.� And off went Uncle.
N.B. - This is sounding complicated already. Maybe I should not judge so quickly.
And with this task of message relay so assigned to Mom, enter the worrying, or monitoring, or tracking.
Instantly: �Oh, I hope Brother makes it back in time to take her to the airport? Where were they? They said they were just going down the road. But maybe Cousin didn�t find the thing she needed down the road. Maybe they had to go all the way into town. I wonder where they are. How late will they be? Does Cousin know she has to catch a flight? Maybe she has forgotten the time of her flight? Maybe I should call them?�
My immediate reaction was, �Hey, yo, not my flight, not my errand, not my schedule, not my problem! Nor yours either!� But along with clarity I guess I am also acquiring diplomacy because I left that under my hat.
Now, the quick solution would be a call to Brother�s cell, delivery of the message, and going about your day. Yes? Yes.
But that was not even attempted. Instead, Mom sat about on pins and needles for about half an hour awaiting Brother�s return, occasionally watering the worry-weed with mutterings of �Where are they . . . what if she misses her flight . . . where could they be?�
When the car finally pulled in, I think she jumped four inches, �Oh, thank God, they are here!� and she went flying out the door to deliver the message.
Now I won�t deny that it�s inconvenient to be tasked with delivering a message, generally, and this kind of time-sensitive message, in particular. But really!
Dad said to me, in a quiet aside, while she was out talking to Brother, �She has been worrying for four months where everyone is going to sleep this week.� (We have four cabins in this complex and it�s a full four houses this week � cousins from Colorado, California, Florida, Arizona, and points both north and south all have converged on the family camp.)
�Well, you remember her mother,� I said, �it�s a clear transmission of a serious worry gene.�
�Thank goodness that it stopped with your mother,� said Dad dryly.
�I am not sure whether it�s a genetic deviation to center or a response to watching her tear herself up all these years,� I observed, �but you�re right, neither Sister nor I have that issue. Brother, now . . .�
Dad shakes his head. �Not like that,� he says.
Example the next. Mom has been bemoaning the state of the little cabin in which she, Dad, and Brother are staying. And I do agree with her. It�s not my favorite cabin either. It�s dingy, dark, small, and generally depressing. One summer she fixed it up pretty cute, but it sort of got guyed-out in the intervening years, and now it�s back to a general state of disaster.
Add to that one Brother living out of suitcases in the living room, and Dad with his computer(s) and bags of birdseed, and a stone fireplace in the process of being torn down, and a painting project in the process of being completed (that ladder�s been there three days and I am not sure of the progress � DIY emulating contractors), and I think she�s absolutely justified in calling the whole thing a pretty much total disaster.
She�s groaned about the state of this several times, �It�s just a disaster, it�s dirty, everyone�s into projects, it�s chaotic . . . .� And further, that she�s not getting time and space to think or write. Long story short, though I haven�t made it so, her environment has got her down, down, down.
I am deeply sympathetic to this, because my Florida house is about $30,000 away from being a great environment, too. It�s a good solid house with cool floors and keeps the rain off my head but it�s got some Issues. And I have let work distract me from correcting them, and I�m in the same boat here, so I am not judging. I am just observing.
In any event, once again, for Mom it�s the �taking action� part that again seems to be the challenge. I was hanging out there yesterday, watching the drama go by, and I was looking around in a certain way.
�What?� she said, �You�re thinking of moving furniture, aren�t you?!�
�Well, I notice that you have a serious dearth of storage here.� And some other problems. Starting projects without finishing them seems to be genetic on my mother�s side of the family (Dad has no such issue). The cabin has doors painted on one side and bare wood on the other. Trim is painted on the outside but not around the doorjamb. The edges of shelves are painted, but not the bottoms. It all contributes to the general air of half-finishedness.
Plus, an olive-colored hide-a-bed is doing a really, really, really dysfunctional aesthetic tango with the grey faux-wood paneling, the salmon-red doors, and the walnut-veneer cabinets.
�But the hide-a-bed is new,� Mom protests.
�And it�s jolly fine! I am just suggesting that maybe you�d feel a bit better about the place if we at least got the color scheme in order � maybe some deep olive trim painting, and a pale buttercream yellow on the kitchen accents, and painting fresh clean white over all that weird gray paneling . . . I have a whole free day tomorrow. I can stop at the Home Depot on the way through town and we could make quite a lot of progress in a very short time . . .�
OK, Ygraine is being bossy again. Or, as I prefer to see it, is offering to be helpful. But in either event Mom didn�t like it, and that�s fine. It�s her cabin, her chaos. But I think the method of declining the offer is revealing.
First response: �Well, your father is so busy with all his outdoor projects . . .�
(Each response sort of trails off into silence. I guess I am to supply the true objection where the ellipses appear. I am sure what this one is. . . . so busy that he won�t be able to help? . . . so busy that Mom can�t start a project out of deference to his busy-ness? . . . so busy that painting will interrupt his much-needed nap time? I don�t know. You pick. It�s always a guessing game with my mother.)
I parry that, which leads to a second response, �And your brother is here . . .�
( . . . and his stuff is a mess? . . . and it would be disruptive to his social schedule? Does he need naps too? . . . and she wants to spend time with him instead? This one is even weaker than the previous one. I learn later that Brother is gone all day today, which was the proposed decorating day, so this objection�s not only spurious but also, er, not quite true.)
I parry that too, but I say, �Look, it�s OK to just say no.�
Third response: �Well,� she says, �I am just not sure I�m up to it . . . �
(Not being �up to it,� in my family, usually means you aren�t feeling well, but it can mean a lot of other things, so this also is a negative. But it�s not a �no,� now is it?)
At this point the game changes a bit in my mind: the goal is no longer to get permission to mess with the cabin, it is to get a straight �no� out of my mother.
And then Dad jumps in � with all fairness, probably accurately feeling that I am putting too much pressure on Mom -- �Well, it�s such a big project. I mean, we have pictures all over the walls, and nails in the walls, and so forth. Gosh, it would just be a big project.�
See, he doesn�t say �no�, either!
�Mom, Mom, it�s perfectly okay to just say �no�!�
�Well, then, I guess . . . I guess not. But you�re here for a week in September, maybe we could do it in September . . .�
Dad offers to me, helpfully, �She wants to visit with everyone now while they are here, you see.�
But I peek out the door and I don�t see anyone to �visit� with. Nor were they �visiting� when I pulled in. Brother was off on his errand, and Cousin was with him, and Other Cousin was happily doing something on his computer, and Aunt was on the phone, Other Cousin was supervising some kind of plumbing repair, and Younger Cousins and Their Significant Others were all out fishing and swimming.
There was no �visiting� being done. When I arrived, there are just my folks, not �visiting� anyone, but hiding back in this dingy awful cabin, with Mom sighing that it is dingy and awful and refusing (oh so circuitously) to DO anything about it.
Or are they �visiting� with me?
�No problem,� says Ygraine, �it�s all good.� I am of course mildly miffed, less about the redecorating than about this round-dancing with my parents, yet again, for yet another twenty minutes of my life that I will never get back.
Then Mom wants to be conciliatory, ah, bless her heart, all she ever wanted was to make all the people happy all of the time. But there is an adage about that, I think.
After a few minutes of other conversation on other topics, she goes to the kitchen and holds up a cutting board. �See, Cousins Deceased Two Generations Back had thought this cabin would look good with this sort of Norwegian salmon-red like this cutting board.�
Oh, ummm-hmmm? You mean that color that�s on one side of a couple of the doors? Nicely set off by the bare wood on the other side of the doors?
This is not convincing so she rallies again: �But even if we don�t do it this summer, we can talk about it and think about it. I do like thinking about new options and color schemes! I had not even thought about a green in here . . .�
What, and spend three hours talking about it so that we can further avoid the issue of possibly having to do it?
Then she pads into the bedroom and says, �And if I was going to change anything, it would be the color of this door . . . � which also would be a good idea.
Look, this is probably as tedious to read as it was to live through, so I�ll let this go here. But you get the point. For the record, any further big sighs on Mom�s part about how dismal and dingy the place is, will be duly sympathized-with but will not be taken to heart.
I know I do a bit of this myself � hello, home training! � and I trust that Mercury is training me out of it.
Further points to draw the line, if we need them to do so. We are downtown to attend a play.
�I keep seeing people that I sort of think I recognize,� I comment to Mom.
�Oh, I know,� she groans, �and I haven�t told anyone I am in town and what if they come up to me and find out I�m in town and haven�t called them?�
�What if they do?�
�What do you mean?�
�Mom, seriously what are they going to do, take away your birthday?�
She pauses a couple beats and then looks up at me.
�You�re right, aren�t you. What are they going to do? Honey, you are really my breath of fresh air.�
Whoo, I just can�t worry that hard.
I think some of it is my work? I have so much crap to worry about that if I worry about all of it, all the time, I will drive myself into a fugue state. Or, alternatively, that I�ve had so much experience now with people cussing me out, lying to me, and just plain being nasty that nothing on this social level much worries me any longer.
(Mercury once turned down a narrow street at an appreciable rate of speed. An oncoming car was also approaching at an appreciable rate of speed. �Come on,� urged Mercury, �Wanna play chicken? Just try it! I�m a litigator.�)
In closing I will just record that in the last ten days
. . . I have been out to the cabins for cocktails and dinner every night but one (and cooked one night for 17 � that was fun actually!) and brought Mercury along for as many nights as he was in town
. . . I attended dinner and the play with my folks and a bunch of relatives last night
. . . I�ve invited my folks to dinner at my place and they declined (�Oh, honey, I�d love to but all the Other Camp Cousins are coming for a chili feed,�)
. . . Though Mom did come out and we spent a great afternoon here that same day, and she helped me cook and picked a beautiful wildflower bouquet for the table
. . . I�ve invited my folks out to spend a day at my place (�I don�t know, your father is so busy with all his projects, we�ll see . . .�)
. . . My mother formally declined my offer of a Decorator Day working together on the cabin (see above)
. . . My whole family came out to my house to open it up last week but declined Mercury�s offer of a picnic lunch and
. . . further declined to stay into the afternoon for a campfire
. . . and in fact all pleaded hunger and other engagements and bolted for their cars while Merc was actively working to set up the firepit (�My god,� said Mercury, �I had thought we�d spend a nice day together out here as a family and instead we�ve been formally ditched!�)
. . . And that I have had a great vacation, have had lots of family time, have seen all the relatives I needed or wanted to see, have eaten more Cream-of-Anything Casseroles than any human should be sentenced to eat, and have though about all this in advance and am now fully, fully prepared, for Mom�s now-traditional final remark that she will make at, or on the way to, the airport when I leave:
�Oh, honey, it was such a good vacation but there�s never enough time . . . we barely got to see you!�
8:04 a.m. - 07-08-09
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